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/lit/ - Literature

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2521582 No.2521582 [Reply] [Original]

So, I've built up a fairly respectable library of Canadian "classics". The problem is, I know very little of Canadian literature published in the last 20 years.

I have:
Rohinton Mistry
Ann-Marie MacDonald
Anne Carson
Alastair MacLeod
Guy Vanderhaege
Jane Urquhart

I'm excluding some authors that have written their major works before this time period. Could anyone tell me which major authors I'm missing?

>> No.2521609

half of them can be ignored because woman author

>> No.2521623

>>2521609
Well that isn't a very helpful contribution to this topic, and it is clearly not true.

Canada has a suspiciously high amount of really good female writers.

>> No.2521632

Carol Shields' "The Stone Diaries" is pretty monumental and came out in 1993. It's the only Novel to have won both the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada, since Shields had a dual-citizenship. I read a few months ago - great stuff.

>> No.2521657

>>2521632
Thanks! I know Ive seen her name a lot while browsing the canlit sections at my local bookstores.

>> No.2521663

>>2521623
>really good female writers.

I can't parse this can you rephrase

>> No.2521665

You're also missing Michael Ondaatje. I've only read "In the Skin of a Lion (1987) a few years ago, when I wasn't really interested in literature, but I remember liking it. He still writes; I think he published something about a year ago.

>> No.2521669

>>2521657

Stone Diaries is her masterpiece; I probably won't read any of her other works for a while - there's better stuff to read :)

>> No.2521674

Mordecai Richler?

>> No.2521691

Canada have writers?

lol....

>> No.2521697

>>2521665
You're right, I forgot to put him down. I have a copy of the English Patient waiting to be read.

>>2521674
Duddy Kravitz would seem to be his major work and it was published in 1959.

>>2521691
Yes, surprisingly.

>> No.2521721

>>2521691

It saddens me that we still haven't won a Nobel Prize for literature yet. Although our population isn't that large, and about fifth of it is french.

>> No.2521726

I can't say I'm a fan of Carol Shields.

But I loved Miriam Toews' a complicated kindness, and Margaret Atwood did too. Yeah, it's kind of true that Canada has oodles of amazing women writers.

Dionne Brand is my favourite contemporary poet.

And for an obscure novel I highly recommend, especially if you're interested in the social history of modernism, read Atmospheres Appolinaire. I loved it.

Also, Thomas King. Born in the states (which we don't know for sure because he always trolls people on this point), but has lived here for a long time.

>> No.2521728

>>2521721
Bellow won it, and he is technically Canadian, but I know what you mean.

Robertson Davies totally deserved it. It just goes to show what a joke the Nobel prize can be.

>> No.2521740

Alice Munro is still around. Haven't read much of her recent stuff, but "Lives of Girls & Women" is great. And it's a bit outside your 20 year limit, but Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners" is incredible.

>> No.2521749

>>2521726
Thanks, I hadn't even heard of a few of those people.

I guess I am also pretty ignorant of Canadian poetry.

And is it just me or is major Canadian theater pretty much non-existent.

>> No.2521763

>>2521740

Yes! That book is so fucking good. I forgot to mention that the author of Atmospheres Appolinaire is Mark Frutkin.

Another major Canadian writer who not many Canadians know about, but he is hugely popular in Germany, is Linwood Barclay.

It's sad that there have been a few Canadian writers who couldn't get published in Canada, but got published elsewhere (i.e. Mavis Gallant).

>> No.2521841

Contemporary poets of 1960-1970: Al Purdy, Milton Acorn, Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, Gwendolyn MacEwen, John Newlove, Joe Rosenblatt, Michael Ondaatje, bill bissett, Leonard Cohen

More poets: Roo Borson, Marilyn Bowering, Lorna Crozier, Barry Dempster, Christopher Dewdney, Pier Giorgio di Cicco, Mary di Michele, Don Domanski, Endre Farkas, Raymond Filip, Judith Fitzgerald, Artie Gold, Kristjana Gunnars, Brian Henderson, Diane Keating, Erin Mouré, Ken Norris, Monty Reid, Robyn Sarah, Sharon Thesen

More poets, who still write today: David McFadden, George Bowering, Steven Heighton, Rishma Dunlop, Jason Heroux, Steve Venright, Lillian Necakov, Robert Earl Stewart

Foreign, Exiled Poets in Canada: Walter Bauer, Melech Ravitch, Rachel Korn

Others: bpNichols, Bronwyn Wallace, Carey Toane

Shortstoryists: Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, W.P. Kinsella, Margaret Lawrence, Briane Moore, Alice Munro, Anne Hébert, Sheila Watson, Gabrielle Roy, Malcolm Lowry, Norman Levine, Hugh Hood, Jacques Ferron, Gérard Bessette, Elizabeth Spencer, Jack Hodgins, Seán Virgo, Beth Harvor, W.D. Valgardson, Matt Cohen

Notable editors/scholars/writers: Eli Mandel, George Woodcock, Northrop Frye, Wayne Grady

Contemporary poets/novelists/critics: Michael Lista, Nicholas Dickner; many of our poets whose writing appeals to academics are now middle-aged or septuagenarian, those who are young and contemporary are more often involved with Slam poetry.

French Canada: Gabrielle Roy, Nicholas Dickner, Jacques Poulin, Marie Uguay, Jack Kerouac

I have more, hold on...

>> No.2521853

>>2521841

Jack Kerouac???????

>wat

>> No.2521859

Margaret Atwood has amazing novels too.

>> No.2521860

>>2521841
Brilliant, thank you so much.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Margaret Avison or E.J. Pratt

>> No.2521890

>>2521841
cont.:

See Michael Lista's column, On Poetry, in the National Post, available online for free. He reports about major poetry conferences in the country, and frequently writes biographical and theoretical articles on the country's poets. He is also the editor of poetry for The Walrus, a Canadian version of the New Yorker, but more focussed.

See these poets, too: Earle Birney, A. M. Klein, Irving Layton, Louis Dudek, bpNichol (I spelt his name wrong earlier);

these short storyists: Morley Callaghan, Sinclair Ross, Mordecai Richler (and his novels!)

the classic Yann Martel

this biographer, Allan Gould; media philosopher Marshall McLuhan; radio broadcasters Gian Gomeshi, Richard Terfry (also a spoken word artist of over 300 songs in his discography), and Michel Terrien.

and these First Nations writers: Gregory Scofield, Philip Kevin Paul, Richard Van Camp, Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

also the Globe and Mail often features Canadian book reviews, though they like to read the bestsellers more than the contemporary artists. Ask me for any category of writers and I'll try to provide more lists. I'm sorry that my knowledge of québécois writing is so poor!

>> No.2521898

>>2521853
Kerouac was French-Canadian heritage and sometimes translated French-Canadian Patois oral tradition poetry into English.

>>2521860
I'm sorry, I recognize their names but I am not familiar enough with their writings to suggest them from the top of my head :P

Also see the Canada Reads programme that CBC hosts annually, and the winners and nominees of the annual Governor General's Award.

>>2521859
It's good to have such a responsible icon for Canadian women writers, but she is a bit unrealistic in her personality. She says that she is not a feminist writer. Reading her work, you can tell her hangup is academic appeal, frequently flirting with the postmodernist structure instead of really telling a compelling story.

That reminds me, if you want postmodernist-feminist-Canadian literary academese for an essay, you can read Lorna Hutcheon. I prefer the contra-academese folk, like Al Purdy and Mordecai Richler. They knew how to be MEN of letters.

>> No.2521900

To add to your Quebecois list: Hubert Aquin, Marie-Claire Blaise, Ringuet, Louis Hemon, Janette Turner Hospital

>> No.2521904

>>2521900
Scratch Hospital, she is not Quebecois at all. Not sure what I was thinking.

>> No.2521905

Timothy Findley. I'm fascinated by butterflies.

>> No.2521911

Poetry wise, Guttumor J. Guttormorson, Gilles Henault, Bliss Carmen, Robert Service, and the aforementioned Eli Mandel are all great 'classic' poet.

>> No.2521914

>>2521898
You seem incredibly knowledgeable about canlit. Have you actually read all of these authors or are they just names that you are familiar with. It just seems kinda unusual cuz it is rare that anyone, even a Canadian, would know so much about the subject

>> No.2521922

>>2521898
And one last word on Atwood. That she should call the national theme of our literature one of Survival (see her anthology of that title) is perfectly all right for a PhD. aspiring student, but it really isn't our national theme. We are not a nation founded on holocaust or genocide survivors, nor political refugees, nor illegal immigrants, though those people have their place in our national community and identity. Our nation, as I see it, has more in common with its assumption that it has a purpose to seek for its arts, a deadly assumption, an assumption that beyond immodesty leads many artists into an abyss of insignificance, and insignificance of the worst kind, that of human insignificance, that includes all time and all the world. I'm just an over-critical student-type, but I still think there is a major lack of foreign influence and love in a country that boasts its welcoming of multiculturalism, though it seems that it is a mere economic scapegoat that allows the government to spend less money educating our nation's children by importing the workers with the desired specifications. The only G8 nation with a declining birthrate in prior years (though Russia may have joined Canada by now in that facet).

>> No.2521925

>>2521922

just curious
what province do you live in?

>> No.2521927

>>2521914
A lot of their works are readily accessible because there is so much literature in the quotidian bookstore or bouquinerie, and accessible too because the works are poems or short stories, and not necessarily lengthy novels that eat up all of our time that we need to build fires, igloos, and hockey rinks for les soirées de hockey. I haven't read them all, no, but I hang around a lot of the still-living bunch, and do a little bit of journalism about them and their works. There are always more.

Check out the Baseline Press of London, Ontario. London, Ontario is a very literary town. Toronto, too. The Mansfield Press is very warm and contemporary.

>> No.2521930

>>2521925
And obviously I live in Ontario :P A lot of the contemporary names give that away. I'm a student of linguistics and world languages at Queen's University.

>> No.2521938

>>2521930
You have a nice Romanian flag.

>> No.2521943

>>2521922
I'm not so sure that your idea is all that different from Atwood's idea of survival. Most early canlit seems to be based on a lack of literary background and the struggle to overcome that lack and break through to the world of literary canonicity. Most developing literatures are probably like that. I'm not the most well-versed in canlit and Ive only skimmed Survival, but it does strike me as a very important them.

What do you mean by a major lack of foreign influence?

I would think, at least from what I have read, that a lot of our literature is pretty derivative of world--especially American--literature.

>> No.2521945

>>2521930
how old are you?

>> No.2521970

>>2521945
19.

>>2521943
Absolutely, the American influence is massive. Foreign influence, not so much, and based on the fact that any foreign influence comes from monoglot white-folk who haven't made time to learn another language, reading only translations of non-contemporary, impertinent writers, and thus can't properly appreciate another culture; that is the symptom in our literary culture. We are derivative, yes, we are erudite, sure, but we are not original and we are not with the times. Not just Europe, the East, too. Often we have immigrants or first-generation writers who embrace their heritage solely and to get a panoramic is rare. I just don't see the reason behind supporting a national identity in literature when it would be so unfounded, so lacking in erudition, proper scholarship, excluding most philosophical and political themes at once to focus on a few. That said, I sound more critical than I am in reality. There are many very well-made poets in our country even today, despite the major impact from a dominating American culture, the sneakily oppressive government of media control, and little understanding of contemporary sociopolitical issues in the First Nations communities of our country.

>>2521938
Thanks? :P Do you speak Romanian? What do you think of Paul Celan?

>> No.2522007

>>2521970
I have to agree that a lot of our literature is unoriginal, and, well, kinda bad, but I think that's just a symptom of being right next to America and having a tenth of the population. It clearly pales in comparison, but I wonder, if that is because it is not as good. Taking a similar-sized fraction of the American population would probably give you a literature much the same as what we have now. We haven't had any Whitmans or Dickensons, but very few countries have.

That being said, I definitely think canlit is going to get a lot bigger. We already have a lot of roots down and it is only a matter of time before some great writers spring up.

>> No.2522026

>>2522007
>We haven't had any Whitmans or Dickensons, but very few countries have.

What a great way to put it. But we have had many great writers, in their individual strengths they triumph over many challenges in a sociopolitical life. The political life in Canada for the individual is always one that thickens as you read more, and so the most educated seem to be the most troubled people, which can make for potent writing. Look at Richler, look at Uguay, look at Roméo Dallaire.